2018 United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights

Organized by Global Compact Local Network (Brazil, China, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Korea, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom) and United Nations Global Compact

The Local Networks engaged in the coordination of this session have developed the following informal pre-read for this session, providing a snapshot of BHR initiatives of Local Networks of the UN Global Compact around the world. You can access the document here


Brief description of the session:
The UN Global Compact is the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative, with over 9500 business participants from across all regions of the world. Crucially, Global Compact Local Networks operate in 71 countries to support businesses on their sustainability journey in their own regions. This session will present practical perspectives from across the world on the theme of:
Better connecting responsible businesses across global supply chains
Global Compact Local Networks operate across all regions of the world, and include companies from the bottom to the top of global supply chains. This segment brings together businesses at both ends of the supply chain, to address how responsible businesses on both sides can better connect to promote respect and support for human rights.
The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights clarify that enterprises have an independent responsibility to respect human rights and that in order to do so they are required to exercise human rights due diligence. In a recent report on the state of play of corporate human rights due diligence in practice, the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights found that "Translating corporate policies into local contexts, for example in subsidiaries, is a challenge across sectors. There is typically a disconnect between the corporate level and implementation on the ground as well as gaps in internal alignment between functions and incentive structures. ...An apparent gap in current supply chain management is that human rights due diligence tends to be limited to tier-one companies."
The panellists will share their experience in implementing effective human rights due diligence across supply chains, and discuss some of the ways they and their partners are looking to improve supply chain management in the future. From the perspective of headquarters, a local subsidiary, and a local supplier, the panellists will examine how disconnects can arise between these actors - and identify some of the best ways to overcome them.

Session objectives:

• Illustrate how the UNGPs are implemented in practice, , including some of the main challenges, existing good practice and potential areas for improvement

• Identify the main “disconnects” in respecting human rights along supply chains between headquarters, subsidiaries and local suppliers
• Build understanding on the role of human rights in procurement decisions
• Portray good practices of companies from different regions

Format of the session:
Tentative Agenda:

• Welcome (2 minutes)
• Better connecting responsible businesses across global supply chains
  • Introductory Remarks by Sustainable Procurement & Human Rights Expert (10 minutes)
  • Moderated interactive discussion between business panellists (40 minutes)
  • Interventions from the floor from other LNs speakers (5 minutes)
  • Q&A and Discussion with the Audience (20 minutes)
• Closing & Call to Action (3 minutes)

Audience Engagement 
 This session will engage the audience by using the Q&A and polling application slido,